Day 21, Exposed…

Day 21/46 of daily Lenten blog posts

I’m hoping this will be a ‘Beauty-from-ashes,’ post, retrospectively.

This morning I had a 3 year old come in. Here story was a little confusing, but apparently she had fallen and injured her ankle. She went to a doctor near her home for evaluation, and he focused in on the swelling she had around her ankle. If their story is correct, he proceeded to cut open the swollen tissue around the ankle, to ‘clean out the infection.’

I have noticed that this appears to be a common misconception of the general population, as well as health care deliverers, here in Honduras; The idea that a broken bone causes infection. On countless occasions patients have asked me if they were going to receive antibiotics for their broken bone. I educate them that it’s not necessary, but I always get the feeling that they think I’m dropping the ball. It may be born of the fact that one can develop a (non-infectious) fever with a bone fracture.

Unfortunately for adorable little Marion (not her real name), it was thought that the bruising and swelling that occurs with most broken bones, or ankles sprains, represented an abscess that needed to be opened and drained. So, this was done.

Then, when she presumably wasn’t getting better, they took her to a major hospital in Honduras where they discovered that she had actually fractured her ankle. Now, she had an open wound with a fracture, thus making it an open fracture. A surgeon, there, repaired the fracture with pins, but she still had a large wound over her outer ankle. It appears that the wound may have gotten bigger, and eventually exposed her ankle bones, and destroyed some of the ligaments.

At this point, they were told that they would have to wait for some specialist to come visit their hospital from ?Puerto Rico? to repair the repairs. Desperate, they sent us a photo of her ankle, and we told them to come out to the jungle to see what we could do.

As of now, our surgeons have taken a look at it and are devising a multi-step plan to fix her ankle and the skin. They are consulting with orthopedic specialists in the States, figuring out the best approach for a happy ending.

I will keep you posted.

Join me in praying for guidance, and healing.

Photo of the day:

I’m not gonna lie, the photo of her ankle is a little gruesome. I hope to be able to share ‘before and after’ photos of this one. But if you are squeamish, don’t scroll down. I’ll put it out of view for those of you that don’t appreciate blood-n-gore.

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